“Probe” Made of Aptamers: New, Molecular Approach for Early Cancer Detection
University of Florida researchers have pioneered a new approach to detecting cancer cells that will eventually allow doctors to detect many malignancies much earlier than currently possible.
The researchers have successfully tested the technique to find leukemia cells. The technique (which they call the potentially new cancer probe) will open doors to the first systematic approach to diagnosing cancer at the molecular level.
This technique will one day offer a better method of targeting individual cancer cells with drug therapies and reduce the side effects of chemotherapy.
“Normally, definitive diagnosis of cancer requires a visual examination of the tumor, which is an invasive and time-consuming process,” explained Weihong Tan, a UF professor of chemistry and lead author of the paper. “Most importantly, this process is not suitable for early detection, when the cancer is at its most treatable.”
“Using the cell-based aptamer selection strategy, we can generate aptamers which can specifically recognize any kind of cells without prior knowledge of molecular changes associated with the disease,” he said.
The molecular probe made from designed sets of aptamers was able to recognize leukemia cells that had been mixed in with normal bone marrow cells. The aptamers also successfully distinguished leukemia T-cells from lymphoma B-cells.
These experiment results indicate that the aptamer method could be used to identify many different types of cancer and should be able to find cancer in a much earlier stage when the tumors are much smaller.
Aptamers are short strands of chemically synthesized DNA.
Read more at University of Florida.
Tags: early-cancer-detectionRelated Stories
POSTED IN: general commentary
0 opinions for “Probe” Made of Aptamers: New, Molecular Approach for Early Cancer Detection
No one has left a comment yet. You know what this means, right? You could be first!
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: